Superintelligence undermines its innocuous silliness and any potential rom-com aspirations with needlessly complicated stakes and a fixation on its own high concept. There’s a genuinely…
Jungleland is a deeply familiar film that injects little energy or originality into its template narrative. Max Winkler’s Jungleland follows bare-knuckle boxer Lion (Jack O’Connell)…
Synchronic does many things well but ultimately fails to must the creative energy its directors typically bring. In Synchronic, the new film from directors Justin…
The Witches isn’t immune to some familiar children’s cinema pratfalls, but its hyperactive energy and Zemeckian set pieces keeps things mostly singing. Robert Zemeckis’ 40-odd-year…
Books of Blood is a little exploitative, quite a bit derivative, and overwhelmingly boring. There’s nary an original image or idea in Brannon Braga’s Books…
The Glorias is shallow hagiography that fails to complicate the fascinating person it seeks to showcase. In July, Harper’s Magazine published “A Letter on Justice…
Coastal Elites is a tone-deaf and formally lazy film that ignores issues of substance in favor of a facile call for civility. Anyone concerned that…
The Whistlers makes the most of its basic parts, tying some nifty knots and glossing up proceedings, but it fails to offer anything memorable. Corneliu…
A barrage of cuts set to the metronome of a ticking clock fragments the daily routine in and around a meat market in the…
Depiction of extreme pain is not the most distressing thing about Finnish BDSM comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. Frequent scenes of a dominatrix strangling…
With the distinct air of an artist desperate to cobble together a personal story out of some old rusty parts, III is a film…
The Satanists in Hail Satan? don’t actually worship the devil, but it’d be a lot cooler if they did. Instead of ritualistic blood sacrifices and black…
Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure was not, by most metrics, a hit, but it wasn’t a failure either; it made a small amount of money…
The narrative framework of Helena Wittmann’s Drift revolves around two women, each going their own separate ways after spending some time together in northern Germany. One of…
Early in the second half of J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier, Ben Affleck’s character executes a South American cocaine farmer, lying on the ground, just…
If Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc doesn’t scale the insurmountable heights of St. Joan films by Dreyer or Bresson, it’s for Bruno…
Commissioned as part of Nikkatsu’s line of Roman Porno reboots, and adherent to its rules, Sion Sono’s ANTIPORNO is, as its title suggests, a…
Though Romanian director Cristi Puiu sets his latest film, Sieranevada, at a family gathering commemorating the death of a late patriarch, the filmmaker has much…